Jack Nicholson

Merl Reagle, the pun-ishingly inventive man who had created crossword puzzles for AARP The Magazine since 2004, died suddenly of acute pancreatitis in a hospital in Tampa on Aug. 22. He was 65. Those are the facts of the case. What they can’t give you is a sense of Merl’s love of words, or a flavor of how much fun it was to work with him — or a little behind him, I should say, since that’s where his sprinting …

Arnold Schwarzenegger is back in theaters in full-on android mode, but your best bets this weekend may be three fine films on home video — two from this year, the other a golden oldie. Signifies a Movies for Grownups Critic’s Pick Terminator Genisys When Arnold Schwarzenegger said “I’ll be back!” in The Terminator in 1984, no one thought he meant, “in 31 years or so!” Yet here Der Groovenator is again, trying to prove he’s not obsolete while battling a new …

Notable events from our shared experience “This year’s monster movie star,” Jack Nicholson, makes the cover of Time magazine Aug. 12, 1974, two months after Chinatown opened. The IBM Personal Computer is announced Aug. 12, 1981, with a price of $1,565. According to IBM: “Two decades earlier, an IBM computer often cost as much as $9 million and required an air-conditioned quarter-acre of space and a staff of 60 people to keep it fully loaded with instructions.” >> Photos: Famous …

News, discoveries and fun … 1. Those stories were wrong: Jack Nicholson isn’t retiring after all … at least not from the movies. (Learn more at Vanity Fair) 2. The Saiga, an endangered species of antelope that looks like something out of the bar scene in Star Wars, is making a comeback. (Learn more at National Geographic) 3. More than 90 percent of Americans routinely throw out perfectly good food because they think it’s no longer safe to eat. (Learn more …

Of all the eras in Hollywood history, the decade that stretched from 1969 to 1979 was perhaps the most daring, a time of experimental masterpieces that shocked audiences into seeing the world in a different way. In the era’s edgy eloquence, Karen Black portrayed quirky women who found themselves in trouble. The Chicago-area native, who passed away on Aug. 8 at age 74 in Los Angeles, appeared in nearly 200 movies and TV shows in a career that stretched from …